Cheating Cancels ACT Exam Across South Korea

Due to suspected cheating, last summer the ACT exam was cancelled for all test-takers in South Korea & Hong Kong in what became the first cancellation of the exam to ever affect an entire country, a decision that prevented some 5,500 students from taking the exam at 56 different test centers.

To find out how important the ACT is for South Korean students, & how those who were scheduled to take the test were affected by its cancellation, Korea FM reporter Chance Dorland spoke with Peter Chi, the managing director of test prep company IvyConnection.

About the author

Chance Dorland

Chance is an American journalist and radio enthusiast from a 1,000 person town in Iowa. After studying radio journalism and media communication at Emerson College in Boston, he's lived in NYC, LA, Germany, Colombia and his adopted home of South Korea. Chance has a diverse background of experiences after working for Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Carolla, OutQ News and SiriusXM Radio. He recently served in the U.S. Peace Corps where he taught English and hosted a bilingual radio program. You can find more of his projects at http://ChanceDorland.com.

Fraud runs rampant throughout all levels of Korean education. In the past three years, I’ve seen the AP (Advanced Placement), SAT, and ACT tests canceled for all of Korea due to nationwide, endemic fraud.

In fact, I don’t know a single foreigner who has taught at a Korean university who has not told me, in hushed tones, of overt academic fraud at his or her university.

Anonymous_Joe

Korean newspapers lament the “special treatment” that Choi Soon-sil’s daughter, Chung Yu-ra, received at her high school, which passed her despite having the attendance record of typical high school students’ absences, and Ewha University, where five university professors falsified her attendance, assignments, and credits and a Ewha teaching assistant took her tests.

What Korean media buries in their coverage of Choi Soon-sil’s daughter is that she received special though not uncommon treatment.

Joseph

Yea, is there a point in having these tests now? It sucks for all the students who actually study for them